by Ami McKay
Alder
To clear the liver and cut the hives. Brew up a pot of weak red alder tea. Give in drops to the newborn. Keeps a babe from turning yellow.
Althea
(mortification root) A spirit puller. Calls good spirits into the home.
Angel Water
For calling an angel down when a mama’s two moontimes late. Boil up: black stick, pennyroyal, wild carrot seeds. Add a pinch of borax, a pinch of gunpowder. Mix with whiskey, drink, and wait.
Barley
Scatter by the door to keep evil away. If you want love, drink a cup of barley water every day. Barley and onions in a bath will surely bring a person back.
Bay
Write your wishes on leaves of bay, burn them and they’ll come true the same day.
Beans
Three blue beans in a blue bladder. Rattle, bladder, rattle. Sing three times in one breath to chase the haints away.
Beaver Brew
A dose (straight or with tea) keeps a woman clear from babies for one moontime. Steep the oysters of beavers in gin. Set out in the light of three full moons.
Birthwort
Holds a mother against illness. Take a bath with its juice and a snake’s bite will never do you harm.
Borage
The seeds and leaves make a mama give more milk. Cures a broken heart.
Breech
Means trouble to mama and child. Best to get the babe to done turn on its own. Try: tipping the mama, having her do the elephant walk, giving her a cold belly, singing the babe a sweet song, Mother’s Tea with pasque flower.
Brown Flour Coffee
Turns sickness. Set a pint of flour on the stove until it gets right dry—stir and roast it down dark, like coffee. Put two tablespoons in a pint of boiling water. Scald in milk. Make sweet with honey.
Cabbage
Takes soreness out of hot breasts. Steam the leaves. Let cool. Place on a mama’s tits. Plant cabbage first after a marriage to bring luck and love.
Camphor
Use as a rub for croup or aching skin. Mix with the wash to scare off fleas and bedbugs.
Caul
A babe with a caul sees more than us all. Brings the gift of sight. Saves a man from drowning.
Castor Oil
(Palma Christi)
Brings healing wherever it’s given to the body.
My hands are His hands
My hands are His Hands
Palma Christi
Palma Christi
The Hand of Christ
Cayenne
(capsicum)
See also Quilling. Brings strength to the womb.
Useful for yellow babes.
Childbed Fever
Brought on by unclean hands.
Always wash before you pray.
Coltsfoot
(son-before-the-father)
Nothing works better to tame an angry throat. Don’t plant the coltsfoot in your garden unless that’s all you want there. You’ll see yellow buttons peeking out between rocks and ditches long before the leaves come on, the son-before-the-father. Make note of where you saw it in the spring so you can come back to it. Cook leaves down, strain, add sugar, then boil until a drop of the syrup turns hard in cold water.
Comfrey
Cures the whites when put in a douche.
Dead Needle
To make sure of death. Push a clean needle in the flesh of the left arm. If it comes back dark, they’s alive. If it comes back polished, they’s dead.
Devil’s Bit
(scabiosa)
Brew the flowers to keep her courses regular and clean. Smells like honey. So sweet the Devil bit off the root of the first plant to try to take it away from us.
Dill
For colicky babes, rub the child’s belly with dill seed oil. Makes them sweet again. For hiccups, boil seeds in wine and breathe in the scent.
Dulse
(Neptune’s girdle)
Puts salt in the veins. Keeps the blood strong for another year. Careful! Can arouse a man’s desires.
Fennel
Brings milk to a mama’s breasts. Boil leaves with barley and drink as tea. Makes the flow creamy and good.
Feverfew
(maydeweed)
Make tea with the leaves. Good for a lady who frets. Simmer plant and flowers in water for a sitz bath for a lady’s private parts. Gives strength to the womb. Best to keep it on its own in the garden. Bees don’t have nothing to do with it. Good for a Moon Elixir.
Fiddlehead Fern
Break the first frond you see in the spring. Keeps a toothache away for a year.
Flax
Make tea with seeds, lemon and honey—for coughs and sore throats.
Groaning Cake
(kimbly, gateau a la mélasse)
2 cups molasses
1 cup boiling milk
1 tsp baking powder
3-½ cups flour, sifted
4 eggs
1 cup butter
1 tbsp ground ginger
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
½ cup raisins (or grated apple)
Headache
Simple—Walk backwards half a mile, slow as a snail.
Sick—Take catnip tea. Make a plaster of cayenne pepper and vinegar, apply to brow, then sleep it off.
A rumour is about as hard to unspread as butter.
High Tide Tea
To ease menstrual pains and keep the courses regular.
Three days before her courses are due, a lady should begin to drink this tea:
One part burdock
One part seaweed
Three parts fennel seed
One part wild carrot seed
Tie herbs into a muslin pouch and steep in boiling water.
Twice daily, preferably at the high tides. Not to be taken by ladies wanting to get with child.
Irish Moss
For blanc mange and quieting a troubled belly. Boil one tsp dried plant in a cup of water. Drink twice a day.
Lady’s Mantle
Our dear Lady’s mantle give her tears between the dawn and the dew. Kneel before her between your courses, sip them up with your tongue, and a child she’ll bring to you.
Lavender
Flower of the Blessed Virgin Mother. Tea: for truth, faith and love.
Lemon
The juice of a ripe lemon will clear the head. Squeeze into your hand and sniff!
Lobelia
A flower what knows. If a mama’s gone to cramps and letting go of blood, lobelia will tell her body what to do. If it can save the child, it will. If not, it helps her let it go. Cleans her out. Tea: lobelia, feverfew, red raspberry, catnip. Tea and rest.
Mandrake Root
Balm of the bruised woman. Stand with your back to the wind. Draw three circles, clockwise, around the plant with a knife. Douse it with Mary’s Tears. Turn west to uproot.
Marigold
(calendula)
Marigold honey salve heals any burn or sore spot.
The maid what dances barefoot with the marigold will know the language of the birds.
Mary Candle
To loose an angel from her seat. See Slippery Elm.
Mary’s Tears
On May-eve, stretch a sheet between the trees. Place a stone in the centre so the dew will run down. Put your bowl underneath to catch the drops. At dawn on the first of May, gather it up in a bottle, singing this little song:
On the first of May
Before the sun shines
Mary gives up her tears
For healing divine
Moon-bath
Lay naked in a crossroads in the light of the full moon. Makes the womb ripe.
Moon Elixir
Readies her for making babies. Steep licorice root, feverfew flowers, and bee balm in wine at the full moon. Cook it down slowly, never boil. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar to taste. Makes a woman sweet and her man sweet on her.
Drink through the day to be s
weet, ripe and gay.
Moss
From a good woman’s grave will bring you luck.
Mother’s Tea
Raspberry leaves, nettle, Melissa, dried apple, fennel.
Mouse Ear
Mouse ear tea will save your life. Cures bold hives when they’ve gone around the heart. Grows on rocks at the edges of fresh water.
Navel Cord Care
Grease a piece of fine muslin with tallow, place on a shovel over a fire and scorch until brown. Cut small hole in muslin and pull the navel cord through. Pin bands around it to keep it snug, to prevent ruptures in the belly caused by crying. Leave for 3 to 6 days or until the cord stump dries and falls off. Goldenseal powder is good for drying.
Onion
To cure a cold, rub feet with onions. Bury them when through.
Onion syrup (garlic, onions, molasses):
Three times a day, makes all sickness go away. Bain d’oignon et orge: A bath of onions and barley will turn the worst illness. Throw an onion after a bride and you’ll throw away her tears.
Pasque Flower
(meadow anemone, pulsatilla)
See also Breech. For a woman what weeps one minute and is sunny the next. For a woman who’s scared to be alone, who changes her mind with the wind. Warms the blood and makes her sweat. If that woman’s baby done turned breech, a dose in her Mother’s Tea can turn it around. Wrap the first blossoms in spring in a red cloth and tie it to the arm.
Keeps away disease.
Patience Dock
Tie to the left arm of a woman who’s wanting a child.
Placenta
Bury the afterbirth with a scallop shell. Gives a woman at least a year before she gets with child again. Bury under an apple tree and the child will never know hunger. If a mother’s bleeding won’t stop, salt the thing, wrap it up in paper and throw it to the fire. Burns the blood away.
Quilling
Brings a child out when a mama’s gone tired. Take a quill, push pepper up in it. Blow up her nose when she’s hurting, and she’ll push the babe right out.
Quince
Heals sore, cracked nipples and is quite pleasant. Warm quince seed in a little cold tea until the liquid gets glutinous. Apply to nipples.
Raspberry
God’s gift to all mothers. Gives strength to her whole being. Her heart, her womb, her bones.
Sage
Helps with after pains.
Careful! Dries up milk.
Toads love it. She who would live for aye, must eat sage in May.
The most horrible curse you can put on a woman is to kiss her on the cheek and tells her that things couldn’t get any worse. The minute you say it, they surely does.
Stop Bleed
Brew Mother’s Heart with bayberry bark to make a tea.
Stranger’s Face
Beware the stranger’s face. If a mama’s got it come upon her, get her to bed and get the baby out.
Slippery Elm
Brings the angel down.
Anoint the Mary Candle three times round with the oil of slippery elm. Slip the end into her sweet spot. To stop gossip: Tie a yellow string around a branch. Feed it to the fire.
Weaning
Sage tea in the waning moon. To dry up the breasts after weaning, have her pull some of her milk onto a hot stone.
Willow
Knock on the willow three times three, no evil will follow thee.
Salve nos, Stella Maris,
Save us, Star of the Sea.
author’s note
During the First World War, news from the front dominated newspaper headlines. Stories of the women’s suffrage movement became back-page items of interest. Other issues such as fertility awareness, birth control and the science of obstetrics were only briefly mentioned in large city papers (unless it was to report that Margaret Sanger had been arrested, yet again, for distributing information about family planning) and rarely, if ever, covered by small-town press.
A woman’s struggle to gain the right to choose what happened to her body was a silent issue, recorded in personal journals or through letters, one woman to another. Traditions, information and ideas about childbirth, as well as women’s health and happiness, were shared in the sisterhood of knitting circles and around the kitchen table. In small, isolated communities, the keeper of this wisdom was the midwife.
When I was young, I used to watch my mother so I could learn from her. I loved sitting with her while she cooked, sewed or gardened, and even while she was putting on her makeup. One thing I remember well was her end-of-day ritual of emptying out her pockets onto her vanity. A spool of thread, a note from a friend, bobby pins, a recipe card, a pine cone I’d handed her as a gift, a torn-out picture from a magazine—these treasures would sit on a mirrored tray, looking like they were ready to be presented to a queen. A reflection of her day, her art. When I sat down to write The Birth House, I realized that this was how I wanted to arrange my words, as well: by making a literary scrapbook out of Dora’s days.
I drew from many books and sources while writing, including Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery by Janet F. Kitz, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Giving Birth in Canada, 1900–1950 by Wendy Mitchinson, The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines, Hygieia: A Woman’s Herbal by Jeannine Parvati, Herbs and Things by Jeanne Rose, Edible Wild Plants of Nova Scotia by Heather MacLeod and Barbara MacDonald, and the wonderfully arcane Science of a New Life by Dr. John Cowan. Most invaluable of all were my conversations with residents, past and present, of Scots Bay.
acknowledgments
Thanks to the Province of Nova Scotia and the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage for their generous support in the form of a Creation Grant.
For hands-on training, I send special thanks to my angel of a midwife, Louise MacDonald. For many hours of walking, talking and tea, I send gratitude to my midwife in friendship, determination and laughter, Jen White.
For her constant interest and guidance (and for never settling for anything less than spectacular), I am grateful to my tireless and wonderful agent, Helen Heller.
Profound thanks go to Louise Dennys for including my work in her passionate, trail-blazing advocacy of new Canadian fiction; to my publisher, Diane Martin, for her belief in my work and her keen editorial eye; to my editor, Angelika Glover, for her strong sense of vision and impeccable literary intuition; and to designer Kelly Hill for finding the true essence of my words and dressing them more finely than I could have ever imagined. Special thanks to the ladies who lunched, Marion Garner, Deirdre Molina, Kendall Anderson, Mary Giuliano, Constance MacKenzie and Jan Sibiga, for being such marvellous readers and for championing my work. Thanks also to Sue Sumeraj for her copy-editing assistance.
This book could not have been written without the support of wonderful mentors along the way. My undying respect and thanks go to Dick Miller of CBC Radio for his encouragement and sense of creativity. My friendship and admiration go to Richard Cumyn for hours of conversation and guidance. I will always be grateful to Jane Buss and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia for their proving ground of a mentorship program.
Helpful guides in research included Dan Conlin at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, as well as the wonderful volunteers at the Kings County Historical Society and the Fieldwood Heritage Society. Additional inspiration for this work came from many wonderful kitchen table conversations and afternoon visits with Mrs. Mary Rogers Huntley, the Tupper sisters—Pat and Sharon, Calvin and Joy Tupper, Mrs. Fran Steele and Mrs. Irene Huntley. I thank you all for your generosity and your stories. Thanks also to Mrs. Rhea P. McKay for her encouragement and for sending me her copy of The Science of a New Life.
Although I spent many hours scribbling away in the quiet of my room, the psychic hum of my family and friends could always be felt. Thanks to my siblings, Skip, Doug and Lori,
for letting me spill milk and monopolize dinner conversations. Thanks to Mom and Dad for always reading to me (and to each other) before bed. Thanks to Dawn and Marta, my daisy sisters, for lasting friendship. Thanks to Mitzi at Box of Delights for always asking, “How’s the book?” Thanks to Doretta and the other full-moon hikers (Chris, Holly and all) for hikes, picnics and fires on the beach, and for proving that moms make art. Thanks and hugs to my sons, Ian and Jo, for giving me time to make my art. Dearest thanks of all to my beloved, Ian, for taking my hand on a stormy November day and bringing me home.
